I had a rough child hood growing up. Everyone for some reason thinks its what this beautiful way of living, with my big happy wealthy family with every thing a little girl could ever wish for. I mean, for Christs sake I even had my own horse in the stables. But that's just it, that's all I got. I never had my father when I was little, I have very little memories of him before he left, most of which take place in his black Mercedes. I remember running my hand over the leather interior and watching him smoke a Cuban cigar and sing along to Eric Clapton. He loved Clapton. He called me his princess and believed that I could change the world with the light I have inside of me. He also disappeared and was never there. He gave me presents, jewelry, horses, tuition to Ivy League schools. He gave me every thing he financially could but it doesn't really matter because he was gone and he was what I wanted.
When it all happened, I remember every one in my family hurting. I remember for the first time realizing that my mother was an alcoholic through one too many traumatic moments that, at age 8, I had to handle on my own. I realized that someone I trusted, a family member, took advantage of me. Raping me for his own pleasure, molesting me daily for over three years before I saw something on the TV showing a story about how that happened to another girl like me, saying it was wrong and people could help me. I remember being so scared that I ran into the basement of the house and hid back behind the massive electronic panel box that controlled the house. I had to balance on the wall like a tiny Spiderman to avoid the mouse traps that were set up to catch any mice. I was in the scariest part of the house, the part of the house I used to believe was haunted. And yet I ran there because thats where I felt the safest, because I knew he wouldn't come after me.
He tried to, a few more times before finally turning that sexually molestation into anger. There were multiple times when he would throw me against the wall with one arm, choking me by the neck, punching me in the face repeatedly until my cousin David would run upstairs hearing the commotion and throw him off of me. I would run and hide behind the TV stand, afraid to let anyone touch me. I was 11. My mother had remarried my fathers ex best friend who happened to be a drug abusing lawyer who got violent and abusive when angry. My mother finally broke free from his physical abuse when I was 13 and took me with her to her own place. That's when I finally realized that her alcoholism was no longer just something she did to cope once in awhile that I'd have to watch, it's when I realized that her alcoholism was her.
I had to check on her through out the night to make sure she was breathing, make the right combination of foods before I got ready for school in the AM to soak up all the alcohol she drank the night before so she could function at work, I had to constnatly remind her via post-its of every thing that she needed to do that day so she could remember. I can't count the number of times I was left at school for hours because she forgot me. The nights I had to drag her body from the floor onto her bed. The times I had to fight off her alcoholic rages where she'd start punching and slapping me.
I don't remember all of the details of my childhood because I stopped being a child when I turned 8. I stopped being a child the second my parents become so self focused that they forgot about how they would effect their children. I stopped being a child the second my own blood raped me. I stopped being a child the second I realized that there's no magic in the world...I got lost. For a long time. And I immersed myself in what I could to survive. I took care of my mother, I ignored my own needs for therapy which winded up with me having an eating disorder that proceeded to get my quite ill multiple times. It varied, sometimes my mom would go in tirades about me asking for food because we had none in the house even though she was making millions a year. So I'd stop eating to stop causing problems. Other times she would yell at me to eat more so I would but then I'd get chubbier and she yelled at me then. There was nothing I could do, but love her the best I could, swallow down my tears and just try to survive and get through it.
There are times I've tried to take my own life, there are times that I did things I shouldn't have, there are times I told people things that I shouldn't have, and a lot of times that I didn't tell people enough. The way in which I reacted and handled what was happening to me as I started to mature was not the best way. I wasn't able to see a psychiatrist and actually get help for what was happening. How could I do that when I constantly had to take care of everyone else? My step-dad started protesting in court against my mother for my custody, I began an object. No one cared what I wanted or where I wanted to go, it was the competition and who was better and they both wanted to be the best. Neither of them could probably even name the major I had for the specialized art school I went to. Neither of them were there when I won a Grammy for my school. Neither of them were there when we all won our second Grammy. They weren't there when the Pope requested us to come to Italy to sing for him, when Clinton and Bush both invited us to come sing at the White House and Congress. They weren't there when my best friend died when I was 14, they didn't care when the love of my life and my fiancee, my high school sweetheart, was shot down in Iraq two weeks before he was supposed to come home and be my husband. They didn't care and they didn't notice because what happened to me, what my story was, didn't matter. I was just an object, a trophy to show off.
So I retaliated. I fast-tracked in high school. With the help of my amazing choir director (I was a choir major at my academy) I was able to get emancipated from my parents so I could graduate early and go onto a full ride scholarship at one of the most prestigious music colleges in the country. I was free. And I took full advantage of it. To run away, to get away, to distance myself. I threw myself into my studies, I fast tracked there, I graduated with high honors, two degrees, being called an incredible talent, landed an amazing job that people would literally and have killed for in the past. And yet I realized I never slowed down. I was so terrified of what could happen to me, what might, that I never stopped fast-tracking. I was on the fast-track for everything. And it never ended.
I came back home to see my mother, to visit her. And my heart instantly broke. My mother and I are incredibly similiar. We are driven and stubborn, intelligent and thrilled by business, law, medicine and we follow our hearts. When we love someone we take bullets for them without thinking. We love them no matter what they do because we just love them so. We hurt often but we take the pain because we'd rather have the pain often and be able to help rather then harm. She's an incredible woman. She was a brilliant scientist as head of radiology for one of the largest and best hospitals in the country. When she ran it and was chief, it was number 1. She invested wisely, bought the right kind of company and did the right things to get away from my step-dad so she could have a job and get her life together. I realized that me getting away from her allowed her to greive and get herself together a bit as well. Maybe she was so worried that she was breaking me that she couldn't even function back then? Walking away from her back then, was the hardest thing I've ever done and I sometimes think back and try to figure out if I regret it or if I helped her.
Sometimes, you need to say goodbye to people for them to grow. Sometimes they use you as a crutch and without you letting them go, no matter how much you love their prescence, they need to be able to survive and learn life's lessons on their own. Sometimes, you saying goodbye is you saying I love you more than anything. Sometimes, you saying goodbye is showing how much you love them. Goodbyes like that are mostly temporary, hopefully. If they aren't, they aren't. But you need to let them go because they have to grow and you need to be able to move forward without them holding you back and torturing you mentally/emotionally the way that they do. They love you and they may never wish pain on you but they can't help it. That's when goodbye is needed. When love just isn't enough. When strength is what is needed so you can part your ways and let them find their way and hopefully they'll find their way back to you. You say you have to go and leave them alone but that they should always know that you love them so much. You say that you want them to stay safe, to think carefully, to be kind and that you hope to see them soon.
I've had moments like that with many people and unfortunately the fact that I first had to learn how to let go was with my mother. It was the most brutal, and unfortunately the most painful and it did mess me up and I am aware of that. I know the ramifications of those actions and why I am the way I am and why I respond and act how I do. I know it all stems from my childhood, from my adolescence and what I went through. I know all of it won't change because it's the past and the only thing I can do now...all these years later is to change myself. I can't just say I've learned how to be better, I have to show it, to prove it.
Yesterday I felt 13 all over again. He was back, physically abusing me again and my mom was there, doing nothing like before and I realized that while I may have changed they havent. They're stuck in the past still because they're afraid if they let go of the past what will they have? They think if they let go of what has happened before they won't be able to move forward. No matter what I say to them, they won't listen to me, they will just have to find out for themselves and that...is the most painful thing to watch.
I won't cry, I won't fall down, I won't break. I will take care of myself, I will fight everything I have to stay alive, to move forward, to be happy, to love with my whole heart, to be the best person and friend I can be and I will never let anything stop me. I won't let negativity win like it used to. I refuse to. I'll get by. I'll succeed. I'll survive. When my world crashes down and I hit the ground, I will turn it all around again, just like I've done before time and time again. Don't even try to stop me. Because I know what I'm capabale of and that's just it. I can survive. I can fight. I will fight and I will win. I will survive this. I will survive all of this. And come out of this shining. Because some days it may feel like a devil town but the light does shine in the darkness. Et lux en tenebris lucet.
Have faith in me, and I will always have faith in you.
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